my journey through reading, writing, and life

On a recent visit to the Jefferson Memorial in DC, I picked up a magnet set. I didn’t look at it too closely in the store, but once we got back to the hotel, I noticed something.

Since this is a Washington-themed souvenir, you might expect those backgrounds to be pulled from the Constitution or Declaration of Independence. Or maybe some old patriotic novel. But here’s a closer look:

The text in the bottom left is the title page of Malleus Maleficarum, also known as The Hammer of Witches, which is a 15th-century book about, among other things, how to properly torture confessions out of suspected witches. Other bits of recognizable text are from Daemonologie by King James I, Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World, a pamphlet about the witches of Warboys, and a story about an alleged witch who was shot by parliamentary soldiers during the English Civil War.